Gujarat holds key in race with China, says Modi

DNA Money Bureau

AHMEDABAD: Chief minister Narendra Modi sees Gujarat’s role as crucial in taking India to the pinnacle of manufacturing competitiveness.

Speaking at the launch of DNA Money’s Ahmedabad edition, he said the future belongs to India and China, but between the two, China has a decisive edge in manufacturing. “Only Gujarat can help India compete with China,” he declared.

To emphasise that this was no empty rhetoric, he pointed out that Gujarat was already achieving the targeted growth rate of 10% when the national economy was still at 8%. In agriculture, while economists were struggling to push overall growth rates to 4%, Gujarat last year achieved 11%.

The launch function, which included a symposium on ‘Gujarat in 2010’, was attended by the who’s who of Gujarat’s business. From A to Z (“Adani to Zydus”, as Modi put it), all the biggies of business and academics were there.

They included Karsanbhai Patel, chairman of Nirma group, Gautam Adani of Adani group, Sudhir Mehta of Torrent, Pankaj Patel of Zydus Cadila and Bakul Dholakia, director of IIM Ahmedabad.

Emphasising infrastructure development as the key to growth, Modi said Gujarat had set up a 2,200 km gas grid, and the gas supplied was unsubsidised. He promised to make Gujarat the special economic zone capital of the country by 2010.

Taking a dig at the Centre’s inability to cut the cooking gas subsidy, Modi said states helping reduce subsidies should get an incentive for the same.

He promised to make Gujarat the special economic zone (SEZ) capital of the country by 2010. Gujarat would operationalise more SEZ proposals than any other state, Modi said.

Pankaj Patel of Zydus Cadila would second that. In his presentation he said that several states were happy to announce multi-crore investment plans, but not many converted noble intentions into projects. Gujarat, on the other hand, had a good record, and 47% of the promises made by businessmen did get implemented.

Torrent group chairman Sudhir Mehta laid stress on developing knowledge industries apart from improving infrastructure. “My dream is to see surplus power by 2010,” said Mehta.

Bakul Dholakia said that pushing up the growth rate would not be a cakewalk for Gujarat since other states were now competing for business. “Execution capabilities, and not strategy alone, would decide winners and losers.”

In this context, he complimented Gujarat for bringing its fiscal deficit down, but said more needed to be done. Given the competition for investment, the non-resident Gujarati community would have to contribute more to the state’s growth. “Gujarat has the potential to grow at 12%, making it among the highest growing regions in the world,” said Dholakia.

Chief minister Modi hit out at the country’s past development efforts, saying that we had made a ‘’virtue out of poverty” instead of emphasising growth. India and Israel became independent around the same time, but Israel had gone streets ahead. The bottomline: Gujarat would set the pace now.

Bhaskar Group chairman Ramesh Chandra Agarwal said Gujarat had proved hospitable territory for Divya Bhaskar and hoped that it would find DNA Money equally acceptable.